Window of Opportunity
by Super Puppy
Summary: PostRENT. Mark is going through some old pictures, and is striken with some pretty crappy memories. Almost as crappy as this summary. Just read the damn story.


**Well, I just sort of randomly came up with this while I was supposed to be studying History. It's a Mark-centric fic (of course) that's for the most part one long flashback. Enjoy!**

Mark sighed and shifted in his seat. He had spent the last several hours sitting on the bed cutting together film and trying to make something of it. He wanted a follow-up film since his first documentary was a pretty decent success. But he hadn't been having much luck. All he'd managed to do so far was come across some old stuff of him and Maureen and depress himself.

But the filmmaker would not be so easily deterred. He took a deep breath and delved further into his past, all for the most part captured on photographs since he was still writing screenplays at that point in his past.

Presently, he found a picture of Rodger and himself in June of 1989; the beginning of Rodgers withdrawal. Mark's memories immediately shot back to the hell that had been their lives at the time.

He remembered when Rodger, a few days after April's suicide, had first come to him and begged him to help him get clean.

_Mark had just gone out to lunch with Maureen, and was returning to the loft. He dreaded what he'd find there. It had taken Maureen ages just to convince him to leave for the date._

_Needless to say, when he unlocked the door and found Rodger sitting on the couch looking intently at him, he was mildly surprised. He'd been expecting some sort of crack-induced tantrum similar to what had been happening lately._

_Mark met the rockers gaze, curious. Rodger broke the silence._

"_Mark… I need your help."_

_Mark nodded and joined his friend on the couch, indicating that he was listening._

"_I just… it isn't… this has been a real wake-up call for me, y'know?" Rodger said sadly._

"_Wake-up call?"_

"_About, y'know, the drugs… and stuff… like… maybe I should quit… or something." He mumbled, turning away but glancing at the scarf-clad man out of the corner of his eye._

_Mark's heart soared. He'd been trying to convince Rodger to drop the stuff for ages. He knew it took a lot for Rodger to admit it to him now, so he swallowed his glee and continued to listen seriously._

"_Well… anyway… I was wondering… can you help me? Get clean, I mean?" Rodger turned back to face Mark and looked him in the eyes. He knew he was asking for a serious commitment. He'd heard horror stories of the things that people in withdrawal do to the people closest to them._

_So had Mark._

_But he also knew what it had taken for Rodger to ask him for help, and to admit he had a problem. Mark nodded slowly, but looked at the ground before speaking. "Of course I will, but just remember, this means I'm gonna be your worst enemy until you break the addiction. I'll be nagging you like a mother."_

_Rodger gave a small smile. "You already do that."_

_Mark laughed out loud. He was just so happy to see his friend acting somewhat normal by cracking jokes like that. He continued, "Well, it'll be worse now. I'm pretty sure you'll want to rip my head off a few times before it's over."_

_It was Rodgers turn to nod and stare at the floor. "Well… do you think risking the friendship will be worth it?"_

_He chose his words carefully. "That's for you to decide, Rodge. All I can do is promise that I'll do everything in my power to make sure you never touch that shit again. Weather or not you'll be better or worse in the end, I can't say. But you asked for my help, and I'll give it to you." Mark stuck out his hand on the last sentence._

_Rodger looked at him and thought for a moment. He spoke slowly. "Well, just remember that whatever bad stuff I do or say while I'm recovering, I won't mean. That deep down, I'm thankful. That someday, our lives will be better because of this." He smiled and shook Mark's hand without hesitating another moment._

_And that was the beginning of quite a fucktastic endeavor._

Mark grinned at the memory. He didn't know why, but being needed and trusted like that by his best friend felt great. He had basically put his life in Mark's hands, and neither of them would ever forget it.

Mark continued to thumb through the Polaroids, and his smile began to fade as he came across photos from later in their lives. He stopped dead at one dated August 19th, 1989. That was a day he wouldn't soon forget, either.

_Rodger was in the throes of withdrawal. This was the worst he'd been in ages, and on top of that, he was particularly angry at Mark for a reason that the filmmaker was unable to decipher. But he didn't mind. Mark knew that Rodger wasn't really angry with him, and was not bothered by the constant slews of insults and violence. (Well okay, the violence sucked.)_

_That night, he was laying in bed wondering why Maureen had chosen this unusually lonely and miserable night to go out and cheat on him (or in her words, "catch a movie with some friends.") His sulking was interrupted by a mild thumping coming from the main room of the loft. Mark shot up in bed._

No way,_ he thought, growing angrier by the second. _There is no way he's doing this right now. He can't be sneaking out to see The Man. Please let it not be true, let it not be true, let it not be true!

_Mark was almost afraid to crack open the door to his room and peek out. What he witnessed confirmed his fears: Rodger was slipping on a leather jacket and pocketing some stashed-away finds from their savings jar (yes_, jar_). Mark watched incredulously as he crept out the front door, shutting it quietly behind him._

_Mark sighed. He knew he was gonna have to sneak out and stop him. He felt his way down the fire escape and out onto the street, where he tracked the shadowy form of his best friend for about fifteen minutes until he figured out where he was going. Or so he'd hoped._

_He guessed right._

_Lucky him._

_Or maybe not so lucky._

_When Rodger turned the corner into a nondescript dark alley, he ran into the last thing he'd expected to find there: his roommate._

"_Smile for the camera, asshole!" Mark seethed, turning his lens on Rodger as he stopped short. He'd thought bringing the camera was a nice touch._

(Looking back, Mark realized that was probably the beginnings of his inspiration to shoot unscripted a few months later.)

_The rocker stood and stared at Mark for several seconds, his growing rage visible on his face._

"_Mark? What the _fuck_ are you doing here!?" He sputtered. Rodger was furious. The nerve to follow him around like some kind of stalker and keep him from his crack? He'd been good for months, hadn't he? He deserved a reward. How dare Mark do this to him!_

"_Duh. Keeping you clean." Mark reached out to grab his friend by the arm, but Rodger was too angry. He didn't see the love behind his friend's actions. All he saw was red._

_Mark noted the change of mood and decided to back off a bit. "Hey, hey, all right. I'm sorry, okay? Just doing my job."_

_Rodger was about to retort with a stab at how Mark had been unemployed for ages and then yell at him for being a pain in the ass, but the sound of approaching sirens cut them off._

_The boho boys looked at each other._

"_Fuck!"_

_They ran as fast as they could back to the loft, all grievances temporarily forgotten. Mark hoped that Rodger would have cooled down by the time they got there, but he had no such luck. Instead, his friend seemed even angrier. As soon as the door slammed shut, Rodger wheeled around to face Mark._

"_How dare you!"_

"_Rodge, you—"_

"_Don't you _Rodge_ me, you bastard!"_

"_Hey, calm down and listen for a sec, will ya?" Mark cried, growing slightly frantic. Rodger was scaring him a bit._

_But the musician would hear none of his friend's pleas. He couldn't think straight; the addiction was clouding his mind._

_Rather than take some deep breaths and clear his foggy head, he grabbed a fistful of Mark's scarf and shook him violently._

"_Stay. Out. Of. My. Life!"_

"_No can do." Mark replied as calmly as was possible for someone being treated like a milkshake._

_Rodger threw him against the window and pinned him to the glass._

"_This is all your fault!" He shrieked._

"_Oh, that's original. Scapegoat the Jew. Way to conform to history, dickweed!" Mark retorted, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Mark was panicking inside. He was afraid to turn off the "sarcastic" button because that would just leave the "freak out and scream like a girl" button._

_Rodger just gave a scream of rage and thrust his best friend into the window again, this time with greater force. Mark felt his head knock against the glass and saw stars. He tried to shake it off, but the rocker was on a roll. _(No pun intended, srsly). _He threw a hook and nailed Mark in the face. He grinned in satisfaction at the crack that emitted from the filmmakers jaw._

_Mark tried to calm down enough to talk some sense into Rodger, but the pain in his mouth made it difficult. He mulled it over for a minute, then looked up to discover that his friend was now holding a lamp. _

_Rodger tried to smash the appliance into Mark's frail body, but Mark swerved to the side. His range of movement was shortened by Rodger's grip on his scarf, so all he could do was lean to the side and let his body weight fall._

_A few moments later, he realized that this was a very bad idea._

_The lamp missed Mark and instead crashed through the window, shattering the glass. Rodger jumped in surprise, twitching the hand that still gripped Mark's scarf forward. Mark, unable to control his movement, now found his upper body hanging out the window His hands instinctively grabbed Rodgers and doubled the grip on his own scarf. His feet slid forward until the front of his shoes thumped into a table._

_Mark insanely thought that it was funny that this was the first time he was actually _glad_ that his mother was fantastic at knitting. He also took this moment to realize how interesting it was that Rodger was literally holding Mark's life in his hands, when that's what Mark had been metaphorically doing for a few months._

_Rodger seemed pleased with this change of position. He felt totally in control and for some reason, this calmed him down a tad._

_Mark saw this and tried to plan his next move. Rodger had picked a good time to come back to earth._

_The smaller boho boy knew he had to make a snap decision of weather to scramble forward and possibly upset the balance keeping him alive, or simply try and smooth-talk his roomie into pulling him back inside._

_He looked into Rodger's eyes and saw a tiny bit of the anger fade and a hint of calm return._

_Mark decided to try something._

_Slowly, he withdrew his shaking hands from the scarf and let them fall to his sides._

_Rodger seemed to stabilize a little more. He spoke: "I could kill you."_

No shit, Sherlock _was the first thing that popped into Mark's head. But he decided this was not the time for that._

"_Yeah." He responded, trying to keep his voice from wavering. "But you won't."_

"_Why not?"_

"_You don't want to." Mark said confidently. Or at least he hoped he said it confidently._

"_How sure of that are you?"_

"_Sure enough to not be having a panic attack at my current situation." Which he was._

"_Hmph."_

_For a moment, the two men were silent. They each just stared into the other's eyes. Something changed in that moment. Mark didn't know exactly what it was, and he figured Rodger didn't either._

_But it was enough._

_Rodger snapped back into reality with such resonance that Mark almost heard it._

_Before he registered being pulled into the building, he was lying on the floor next to his best friend._

_They locked eyes for a moment, and both burst into incontrollable laughter._

_Even for months after that day, Rodger still had temper flares, he still tried to relapse, and he still occasionally attacked Mark._

_But it was never the same._

_And it got better._

"Speeeeeeeeeak!" Mark was jolted back into reality by the sound of his answering machine going off. Moments later, he heard Collins' familiar voice come over the speakers.

"Hey Mark! We're all meeting at the Life for drinks in a few minutes. Be there or be square." _Click_

Mark smiled. The Life Café. And all his friends would be there. Including Rodger. Who was definitely not going to try and kill him again. Ever. (And of course Maureen, who he still liked to look at).

It was going to be a good day.


End file.
